In writing Arlinda’s book I had wanted to insert the doctors’ notes into the chronicling of her medical experience. I expected their perspective on Arlinda’s condition could help give insight into the treatment process for a cancer case like hers. I drove to the Records department of both Eden Medical Center and Highland Medical Center and asked for the medical records. The doctors’ notes admitted that in March 2012 they surmised she had only a couple of months to live yet they still prescribed 12 monthly treatments of pamidronate, which would return the calcium floating around her body back in her bones.

In 2012 there was a common assumption that esophageal cancer was only treatable, not curable. There was a study released in 2011, stating that consuming 60 grams of freeze-dried powdered strawberries every day reduced the progression of esophageal precancerous lesions in 80% of the patients with “dysplastic esophageal premalignant lesions”.* (Dysplastic meaning the cells looked abnormal, and premalignant think, “precancerous”.) Arlinda would not have qualified for this study since at the time of its release her esophageal lesion was already malignant. Maybe there were other studies on reducing malignant cancers that she could have been invited to participate. Her prognosis seemed predeter­mined, so she had little to lose from participating in one of these studies.

It all seemed so frustrating that the doctors were declaring hope to our faces, and doom in the notes. Maybe if Arlinda’s caregivers had been given the truth as the doctors had written it in their notes, we may have better prepared for her ascension. There is also the other side of the argument, which believes that any glimmer of hope can be the spark in which miracles can grow. And we were all hoping for her light to come back.

In reading through the doctors’ notes, I became so exasperated by the inconsistencies between what the doctors were writing and what they were telling her friends and family that I stopped writing the book. Years passed with me returning to the book in fits and starts, only to have the same incensed emotions halt its continuation. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the book was about Arlinda’s life and how she lived it, and less about contesting her experiences with doctors’ prognoses.

After 11 years of coming to terms with her passing and moving on with my own life I returned to delivering on Arlinda’s wishes. The writing of the book continued uninterrupted.

* Strawberry study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5081263